Moms & Dads Are Living the Real Dream

As a parent, it's very easy to fall into a pattern where you take your kids and your marriage and your family for granted. Much as we love them, work and personal goals often get in the way, and we get resentful, feeling like they ruined our dreams and goals for ourselves when, in fact, it's the opposite. They are our dreams.

CNN reporter Josh Levs discovered this the hard way when his second son arrived in his arms, cord wrapped around his neck, born at home during a quick delivery. Levs said that in that moment, he knew all that really mattered was his family.

In his words:

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Dream-chasing can also be addictive. Some people become so obsessed with making one idea happen that they stop focusing on what's most important in their lives ... In the moment my son was being born, all my professional dreams ceased to exist. In that room, it was just the four of us -- my wife, our then 3-year-old son, the baby, and me. Family and fatherhood were all I saw.

In that moment, Levs only saw the dream he had as an infant -- to be loved and safe and warm. If you have those things, you really are living the dream. So what is the rest?

It's a combination of ambition and competition and just trying to keep up that makes us strive for the outward trappings of success -- money, fame, comfort, things. We think those are our dreams, but in reality, all we want is love.

So why does it always take some kind of tragedy or near-tragedy to make us recognize what we have?

This isn't that strange or out there. We all know at our core what REALLY matters, so why is it so hard in our daily lives to live that way? We are distracted or we choose to spend time on Facebook rather than engaging with our children even when we know, in the end, we love our children 8 million times more than some dumb social media network.

What is it? Why can't we recognize what matters in the moment? I am going to try to really apply this and remember that every day I have with my healthy children and husband is another day I am living the dream.